


Vivent les Grenouilles

by afamiliardog



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afamiliardog/pseuds/afamiliardog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Alright, let’s do this.  Let’s liberate those frogs.  Liberté, égalité, fraternité, for our tiny amphibious comrades.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vivent les Grenouilles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitty_trio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitty_trio/gifts).



> Warnings: Swearing, drinking, smoking, animal abuse mentions (non-explicit).  
> Notes: Thanks for such a fun prompt!

Grantaire can always find Joly and Bossuet in the same place on Tuesday nights. He gets off work at nine and then heads to the pub, where Joly and Bossuet are crowded into the same tiny table. It’s easy, and routine, and every Tuesday he goes there to find them, except when he doesn’t because he gets off work and needs to smoke right-then- _immediately_ , or has plans to spar with Bahorel, or needs pick an _actual_ fight, or needs to paint. (Sometimes he doesn’t remember these until he sees the face he’s splashed across a brick wall in telltale green paint, broken glass littered beneath it, too familiar, like a childhood face or an old dream.)

But tonight isn’t one of those nights, and Grantaire shoulders in past the throngs of people to the duo. Joly is trying to find the most comfortable posture to study for his midterms in the middle of a crowded bar—he always seems to be about to have midterms—and is ignoring the beer circles that are starting to creep into his notes as he moves them around, flipping sticky pages. Bossuet is talking enough for the two of them, hands animated, ready to spill a drink or two when some hapless bystander comes within reach—the count is eight so far this year.

Grantaire drinks the rest of Joly’s beer, who only puts up a token resistance without looking up. R’s good for another one. “Evening,” he says finally, and folds himself over the back of Joly’s chair to look down at his org. chem. notes, refusing to budge when people grumble loudly behind him about _this fucking asshole, shit._

They are a powder keg, and a match is provided when Bossuet perks up and say, “R, man, you’d never believe what Éponine said the other day—”

And forty minutes later they are sprinting through the _lycée_ campus, past lunch benches and a forgotten, lone backpack left against a tree that some secondary school student is missing right now. Joly is following R, who’s somehow the fastest runner of all of them despite weaving far more than anyone else from drink, and despite his smoker’s lungs. He coughs and laughs and coughs again as he runs, in a feedback loop that echoes across the empty school.

R stops under an overhang, and Joly flings himself against one of the lockers beneath it to slow down. “Not much has changed,” Joly said, his heart beating wildly from the unnecessary sprinting. He presses a hand against his chest as if that'll will it to slowness, and takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Except the paint is a lot more chipped. No funding for schools, except when it can go towards horrible experiments and security cameras. Do you remember security cameras, when you were here?”

“I can’t believe I’m wearing yellow,” Bossuet wheezes behind them, coming in last. “On all the days to wear bright yellow, I’m on a black ops mission—”

“Keep your hood up, you’ll be fine.” Joly reaches over and pulls on the laces of Bossuet’s hood so that it tightens, and Bossuet swats him away, laughing, his only visible expression a nose and a smile. R grins at the pair of them goofily before remembering where they are and turning away. Joly is glad for it anyway. Grantaire has been in a sullen mood for the last couple weeks or so; he’s avoided going to any meets or rallies, and snapped at people when he did. Those sour moods come and go, where sometimes he’s on top of the world, and the other times he seems to have vanished from it except to show up suddenly, both irritated and irritating. But that’s Grantaire. For right now, Joly’s glad to see his moods are lifting.

Of course, it would be from doing something like this—something illegal, and adrenaline-pumping, and fucking ridiculous.

“Room one-twenty-eight?”

Grantaire is already slinking along the wall, frowning at the numbers on the doors. He takes a long time to process each one, from darkness or drink, until finally—

“Yes!” Grantaire jiggles the handle. Locked, of course, and he pulls the picks out of his back pocket with a flourish. “L’Aigle, you’re the muscle. Hold the door down on guard duty, shout if you see anyone—I know Joly will take me down himself if I try to break a school window to escape, and then I’ll give him up in a second if I’m put under questioning, I’ve no stomach for even the threat of interrogations.” Joly rolls his eyes and feels his mouth go flat. Grantaire is kidding, of course, but in that uncomfortable, not-actually-funny way he frequently affects. They all know—Joly and Bossuet better than anyone—what Grantaire had looked like when he’d come out of the police station after being arrested at the protest last August. Grantaire isn’t "cooperative" under questioning—in fact, he is as big a belligerent asshole as he can possibly be, and is prone to suffer “accidents” when dealing with the police as a result of it.

It had infuriated everyone except, for whatever reason, Grantaire himself. “Fucking pricks,” was all he’d said that time, grimly satisfied, and he’d lit a cigarette as he held a cold beer to his eye, and that was all there was to it.

But now he interrupts Joly’s thoughts with his own name. “Joly, you’re chief of sciences, and are coming with—ah.” The lock clicks, and Grantaire opens the door. “You’re coming with me as animal control.”

Grantaire bounds inside without a moment’s hesitation before Joly can argue. Instead, he follows, and Bossuet stands in the door, peering out into the gloom.

The room is quiet, the perfect picture of a secondary school science classroom right down to the periodic table of elements hanging on the wall. While Grantaire looks around, over desks and onto the bookshelves, Joly walks over to the other door in the classroom, the one beside the chalkboard, and cracks it open. A small storeroom, three walls filled with thick wooden shelves. And right next to him—

“Here they are,” he calls out, his voice hushed.

Frogs. Giant, fat frogs in a glass terrarium. Not a large enough terrarium for the twelve or so frogs inside, though, they could hardly hop without jumping on one another. “Combeferre would be so pissed to see this,” Joly mumbles as Grantaire looks over his shoulder. “When he had that little lizard it had a terrarium this size all by itself, remember?”

“He’d be pissed anyway, for what was going to happen. This is just the cherry on top of the steaming shit that is this teacher.” Grantaire wiggles past Joly into the storeroom to stand next to the side of the tank. “Alright, let’s do this. Let’s liberate those frogs. _Liberté, égalité, fraternité_ , for our tiny amphibious comrades.”

Joly huffs a laugh, but moves into place on the other side of the tank. “Since when do you care about the fundamental rights of our tiny amphibious comrades?”

“I don’t,” Grantaire says stoutly. “But I am _awfully_ taken with the idea of having broken into a school so we can liberate some frogs for our Gavroche. And for a laugh. Anyway, christ, who cuts open live frogs?”

“And who makes their _students_ do that?” says Bossuet, listening from outside. “Don’t they have this kind of lesson on the internet anyway, these days?”  

“'Course they do," says Joly, and then nods to Grantaire as he braces himself to pick up the case.  "Alright, on three—one, two—”

The glass case shifts marginally, and all the frogs within hop in alarm, some bouncing off the glass walls, others bouncing off each other. “Whoa, shit, no.” Grantaire steps back, wiping his hands on the bottom of his sweatshirt. “That’s too fucking heavy. No way we could get that outta here. I don’t even think we could get it down on a dollie without smashing it—we’re—” His head swivels to Joly, and he grins. “Oh, good. Perfect. Hold out the front bit of your shirt, we’re going to kangaroo these guys away to the sea where they can be free.”

Joly does not move. “I’m—there’s no fucking way you’re putting one of those things down my shirt.”

Grantaire is already opening the top of the terrarium. “I’m not putting one down your shirt. How would you carry it? I’m going to put like four of them _on_ your shirt, in your makeshift shirt pouch. C’mon.” He reaches down and grabs one frog, who hadn’t been interested in moving in time and seems resigned to its fate. “Who can say no to this face?” Grantaire lifts it gently out. The frog stares him down, paddling a little at the air. “This guy gets it. “ _Thanks for saving me, Grantaire. I was going to stage a breakout at dawn, but this is much more convenient_.”” The low bass Yoda-esque voice Grantaire is speaking in is _decidedly_ unfroglike, which makes Joly smile, which is exactly what he _doesn’t want to do_. ““ _I’m so excited I’m going on an adventure, to fen and freedom! With them_ ,”” Grantaire adds as an afterthought. Bossuet is still looking anxiously down the hallway, and Joly is standing a couple of paces back, one hand braced on a shelf. “Hey, c’mon! You’re going to share this moment with your soon-to-be liberated frog brethren whether you like it or not.”

“I’m fine doing it, alright? I just don’t want to pick them up and get their… secretions all over my hands, I’ll get sick, I just know it. Just thinking about the feel of them makes me shudder.”

“You’re going to be a doctor, aren’t you? Secretions are part of the bag, right?”

“I’m going in for research, not clinical work, and you know it,” Joly says patiently.

Grantaire flaps the hand not holding a frog. “Alright, alright, it’s no problem, Bossuet can come and I’ll give him get some frogs, and he can give me mine, and then I’ll give you the last few. You can just carry them in a little cozy bundle.”

“Maybe I’d better give you yours, first,” says Bossuet, coming inside. “I think I’d drop them if I had to hold onto them while I’m giving you yours—”

“Oh my god, okay, we’re overcomplicating things, Bossuet, just fill me up.”

Bossuet does, and then Grantaire puts four fat frogs one-handed into a Bossuet’s own pouch of his yellow sweatshirt.

“No frogs left behind,” Bossuet says chipperly in an attempt to brace Joly, and what else can he do but accept a wiggly frog from Grantaire, right in the center of his sweatshirt? The frog peers up at him curiously, and Joly prays it doesn’t jump. Thank god for oversized sweatshirts.

A moment later, and it’s done. Bossuet is the first to trot out the door, with two hands holding the makeshift pouch closed to deter any jumpers. He reminds Joly of a princess, holding the front of her dress up so she can walk. He bursts out giggling at the thought, and catches Grantaire grinning too.  

Joly follows him, and Grantaire shoulders the classroom door shut behind them, leaving the terrarium in a disarray for the class to find in the morning. “And now for them to swim into the offing, happy to be not offed.”

“Frogs don’t live in the ocean,” Joly clarifies quickly.  They'd gotten themselves to the sea by the early hours after a night of drinking before—the trick always was trying to get back.  "I'm not sure you know a thing about frogs."

“I don’t know a single thing about frogs. Why the fuck would I need to know anything about frogs? All I know is that the should be free to pursue a miserable life, same as me or you, and that the Seine is that way—” Grantaire jabs his chin towards the road, hands full, “—and we’d better get moving. We can’t drink to their health until they’re set free, after all.”

An hour later and the frogs are freed, hopping along the muddy bank they stand on beside the Seine. Bossuet is trying to unstick his boot from the mud without getting any into his shoe, and Grantaire is lighting a cigarette. "Now these are the triumphs of man I get," he says.

"A bunch of frogs reunited to their froggy life partners in the Seine?"

"And the satisfaction of knowing that Gavroche is going to film that teacher's reaction tomorrow morning."


End file.
